After M rings me with the news that A’s father had passed away, I pack my suitcase in five minutes* and catch the train to Maynooth. As the train rolls through an ever green landscape of housing estates, lone sheds, ruins and fields, I embroider mycellium, tracing hyphae in pencil along the border of my hoop and zipping over the undulating lines with a brown-threaded needle.**

I fancy each stitch as a moment in time, tiny and unprepossessing, but linked to other moments, it contributes to a form resembling one of nature; in this, it is beautiful, however humble and clumsy. I am stitching my time, my life, into a modest tapestry of the world in fragment.

In Maynooth I meet M at the hotel across from the station. I haven’t seen her since our trip to Enniscrone just before the pandemic. In the interim, she’s had a daughter, and the laugh lines around her eyes have deepened, but she’s still as sweet and curious as she was 18 years ago, when we met in the Burren. In our 18 years as friends, there has been much joy, and not a little sorrow for salt.

When M’s mother died years ago, A and I had made a similar trip to Liscannor for her funeral. Mass was performed in a church painted all in pink inside, and the burial took place in a graveyard beside the sea. “Wasn’t it good of you to come?” M says, “It meant so much to me.”

The next morning, during the funeral mass in Celbridge, the priest says, “Jesus is the only show in town.” Of course I don’t take Communion, and neither does M, a coeliac sufferer, as Communion wafers are usually not gluten-free. After Mass we sign the condolence book and inch our way through the crowd toward A, who starts to weep at the sight of us. Then she laughs, “Omigod, the priest was unruly! You wouldn’t know what you’d get with him!” We link arms, stitched together by grief and love.

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* Packing list, a nod to Joan Didion’s, minus bourbon and typewriter: underwear, socks, jumper, boots, eyeliner, SPF 30+ moisturiser, extra hair bands, beanie, phone charger, a packet of Nurofen Plus, embroidery gear, two books, wee notebook, journal, fountain pen. The suitcase’s lightness is pleasing, and I’m tempted to think: I could live the rest of my days out of this suitcase, as long as my pen does not run out of ink.

**A young man, before disembarking, stopped to admire my handiwork, which is not as mortifying as when I first started. Surprised that it’s my first project, he remarked, “You have potential.” *Snort*

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